Panopticon by David Bajo

Author:David Bajo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Unbridled Books
Published: 2010-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

35.

Klinsman sought refuge and order in the gardens outside the Old Globe Theatre, in the easier slant of late-afternoon sun, the squared plantings. But even here his sense of place and time buckled. Arborists, gone for the day, were in the process of removing the giant eucalyptus that had for more than fifty years been a part of Balboa’s skyline, its elegant reach silhouetted beside the bell tower in every postcard. The tree had survived the beetle infestation that had struck eucalypts countywide. But much of its wood might have been compromised, and park authorities decided the risk of falling branches from such a tall tree was too great. Its unique height and strength doomed it. Another of Klinsman’s stories, from a year ago maybe.

The arborists had removed and hauled away all of the tree’s branches. What remained was the singular spire, marked with bands of red tape, indicating where the felling cuts would be made. Klinsman sat on a planting ledge near the empty theater, alone with the tree. The intense perfume of the arborists’ cuts left the air cooler, bracing.

He could never come to this park without feeling that he was chasing something, running from something. Gina could not have found a worse journalist for this assignment: a man who needed a hole in his head, a man who couldn’t even take a nap in the shade of a park without being lured and haunted—by the desnudistas of 1935 and by his vague notion of protecting his friend’s little boy, just the specter of Artie. Why Artie? Why did Artie, the thought of Artie, lead Klinsman to feel protective?

He resisted sketching the eucalyptus spire and instead took some captures, attempting to be more journalistic about things. He took some more stills of Nona Kar’s lenses around the theater courtyard, those he could readily spot, small black caps craning from lampposts or embedded in the old stucco walls like miniature cannonballs.

He returned to the Review at that odd hour when those not supplying copy grew wary of the possibility of extra work, of sudden drops by the writers coming back from daytime assignments, of lastminute requests by those heading out to cover the city’s after-work hours. The low sun and hunched backs gave the news floor a studyhall feel, the restive and bitter grapeseed air of a library. Less than half the desks were occupied, and those present all wore earbuds.

At his desk he could strive for some objectivity, as part of Gina’s grid, number 7, there in the center quadrant. Oscar and Rita were still at the Tar Pits, Gina in absentia. Klinsman drew worried glances. He was the least demanding of the center four, but right now he was the only one. He set to work, hunching in like the rest.

Balboa Park was full of feed, Nona Kar’s own little Ring of Steel plus the hundreds of cells, digitals, and vidcams. It was a very old place and so must be filled, according to Oscar, with all types of eyes, ancient and new—peepholes in fences, viewscopes, lookouts, blinds, trephinations.

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